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crouch on the beach, watching the scene with my eyes.
    The rocky islands were firmly anchored in place, and I was accustomed to the clamor of the waves and the movement of the sea foam and the spray. The sky would be clouds upon clouds, piled like thick blankets of dark blue or grays slipping into black, lightened suddenly by a spot of silver. The sea beneath would resemble the sky, divided between a deep, blackish blue and clearings of white. The waves would rise to the sky as if they were calling to it, speaking to it, or protesting that they were there; they would scud before it in a broad blessing of pure silver, dissolving gradually and mixing with a light gray blue that caressed the shore.
    Or the sun would be setting, hanging in the rounded shape of an orange, as if when it descended a little it would not set in the west but rather would settle full and safe on one of the islands. The sky behind it had a strange color, descending gradually, easily, from a clear red to dark orange to an ambiguous color, neither brown nor the color of lead, which stealthily met the sea behind the islands. It left it for the sun to color the water in front of it, making it whatever color it pleased, making it a wondrous mirror, pink here and silver there, and making lines and clear spaces of leaden gray, the water rolling peacefully between the one and the other.
    I did not think about what had been. I did not think about what was to come. Even the son of Ain Ghazal seemed far away, farther than the disc of the sun that was suspended before me.

5
    My Uncle and My Father
    My uncle announced that he was leaving. The house blazed.
    They were close, more devoted than was usual even in a village where brothers were close to each other, close in where they lived and worked and in how they managed their lives. When they married they contracted for their brides on the same day and held the wedding on the same night, my father taking Zeinab and my uncle, two years younger, taking her sister Halima. My mother would say, “They’re like two peas in a pod.” Neither would do anything unless the other did it too. Even when they joined the rebels in 1936 they came and went together, and patrolled the village together. The day the British searched the house looking for weapons, and poured the oil in the gas and the gas on the olives and the flour and the lentils, they were looking for both of them. They asked for them by name and said they had information that they were hiding weapons. They had hidden the arms in the boat and the boat had been put to sea. My mother laughs, though it was not funny then, whenthe British soldiers invaded the house looking for the arms, and everyone knew the consequences: the price of a single rifle was a death sentence. My God! But she recalls the event and laughs, “We had hidden the rifles in the boat and the boat was put to sea.” Then she sighs, “After that God guided your father and he looked after the farming and stayed in town. But your uncle was one day in town and ten days traveling, a day in Haifa and a day in Sidon and a day in Beirut. Poor Halima, he had no useful work, not even a whiff.”
    Did I love my uncle because he spoiled me? He would announce that I was dearer to his heart than the four boys, his two and his brother’s two. He would repeat, “Our Lord has been gracious to us and given us this girl, praise to the one who fashioned her.” He insisted that I go to school, and he surprised my father by wanting me to go to the teacher’s college in Jerusalem after I completed the sixth grade, the last one in the town school. At the time there was a quarrel between him and my father, but the earthquake was deferred; it did not occur until that night when my uncle announced that he was leaving.
    “Shame on you, you’re leaving when the village is threatened and the young men are guarding it and preparing their weapons.”
    “It’s no use!”
    “If I didn’t know you as I know myself, I would